Learning to fend off the "Depression Dragon"
For as long as I can remember depression was a part of my life. I've had a lot of lovely "clinical" diagnosis' put after it but the basics were I felt down a lot of the time. By the time I reached high school I needed to be medicated and prozac was the catch drug of the time. In the beginning it really helped and I was living on a semi even keel.
Fast forward to January of '98 when my husband and I began treatment. The first thing I noticed was the hormones were turning me into a hag. My husband would often look at me like I had two heads and I'd be clueless as to what was wrong. Thirteen months into our journey I had to take a break because of my health problems. In making that decision I fell into the deepest depression of my life.
I would cry for hours at a time wondering if I'd get to experience what so many people got for free. They didn't pay the money we were paying. They didn't wake up with black and blue body parts. I remember one particular incident that kind of defined my state of mind at that time; I was out shopping for a friends baby shower gift, which in and of itself was hard enough, and I saw this woman who was at least 7 months pregnant rubbing her belly and talking to her baby as she shopped. I ran out of the store to my car and hystrically bawled for the next hour. I think the second coming of Jesus could've happened and I wouldn't have noticed, I didn't even get my friend a gift. I sent a card with a check and my regrets that I was too "sick" to make it to her baby shower.
Looking back that was the lowest point in our journey. I felt hopeless and my heart ached with such a ferocity that I thought it would break into a thousand pieces. My husband, my constant saving grace, brought it all in to perspective for me though. We sat down and he looked me in the eyes and said, "Do you honestly think with your mental being what it is that it would be healthy to get pregnant right now?" My jaw dropped, I was defeating every single thing I was working for, I was eating all the wrong things. I wasn't exercising, I was being my own worst enemy.
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